The Cartographic Branch is pleased to announce that RG 242: Target Dossiers Pertaining to the British Isles, 1938-1945 (NAID 3371016) has now been fully digitized and is available for viewing and download through the National Archives Catalog.
The records in this series are a subset of RG 242: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675-1958. The dossiers, which are aerial photographs and maps of German identified bombing targets, are arranged by country and, thereunder, by location. Other series, not yet digitized, include France, Iceland, Egypt, Yugoslavia, and Iraq just to name a few!
This series relates specifically to the British Isles is made up of over 1,100 images. Each dossier, in the most basic sense, is composed of three parts: a map, an overprinted aerial photograph, and a site report (in German). However, there are variances in the number of actual documents in each dossier. Some dossiers have as few as a single document out of the three while others will have dozens of various versions of the documents included.
Below is an example of a typical dossier from this series. This one focuses on Edinburgh, Scotland.
In addition to the maps and aerial photos being detailed, the dossiers also provide a wealth of other information printed on the individual pages. Coordinates, scale, date, locations, and dossier number are printed on each and every sheet making this series incredibly easy to work with even if you do not speak German!
These old maps provide a wealth of knowledge on the growth of urban areas.